


no happy endings

by schrodingers_zombie



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, alternate endings, death(s) plural, season 5 speculation, web meddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23407786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schrodingers_zombie/pseuds/schrodingers_zombie
Summary: hmm got very excited about writing this at first but then after the first part turns out I think it's bad. but i'm in a bit of a depressive slump so i'm posting it anyway. not like "oh I think deep down this is probably actually not bad" I just... feel like I shouldn't let that stop me from posting. like i'm allowed to write mediocre stuff sometimes! so i'm posting it.probably this note should have been at the end so people actually read the fic but hmmmm I don't... care...anyway the idea is I was like "okay one of them will die at the end of s5 for sure but I think it'll be Jon" and then I thought... what if that choice was actually in the story... and what if jon was the one who had to make it... ft. eye powers showing him futures where martin dies over and over again. and it's probably all the web manipulating him to get him to sacrifice himself. for some reason. idk man I just work here
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	no happy endings

**Author's Note:**

> hmm got very excited about writing this at first but then after the first part turns out I think it's bad. but i'm in a bit of a depressive slump so i'm posting it anyway. not like "oh I think deep down this is probably actually not bad" I just... feel like I shouldn't let that stop me from posting. like i'm allowed to write mediocre stuff sometimes! so i'm posting it.  
> probably this note should have been at the end so people actually read the fic but hmmmm I don't... care...  
> anyway the idea is I was like "okay one of them will die at the end of s5 for sure but I think it'll be Jon" and then I thought... what if that choice was actually in the story... and what if jon was the one who had to make it... ft. eye powers showing him futures where martin dies over and over again. and it's probably all the web manipulating him to get him to sacrifice himself. for some reason. idk man I just work here

So it goes like this.

They’re in the safehouse for a long time. It’s hard to keep track nowadays, with the ever-constant eye staring out from the sky, blocking out the sun and stars and any sign of time passing. But it’s a long time, they can tell nonetheless, before they feel safe enough to leave. Before Martin gets sick of Jon’s paralyzing despair and marches out, rather, and Jon has to run after him because Martin won’t survive out there alone. He _knows_.

But of course Martin knows that too. And he knows that Jon would follow him.

It’s a long time before they leave, but when they get to the place where a village used to be, the rubble is still smoking like it was only just destroyed, like only moments ago the streets were alive and bustling with more than scuttling shapes in the shadows of the wreckage. There’s a field where Martin remembers once upon a time seeing cows; now it’s taken up by a massive, roiling pile of _meat_. Neither of them points out how human some of the limbs reaching out towards them look. They grip each other’s hand tighter and walk on.

Jon’s the one that sees the telephone booth first, of course. Still standing firm, in all its retro glory that he had once teased Martin about, while everything around it crumbles. Martin reaches into his pocket for coins, offers them up for Jon’s approval. Jon looks at the coins and the phone and nods. Yes, they’re real.

Martin holds the phone up so both of them can talk, inhales sharply and starts dialing he number that he hopes will still lead to Basira’s cell phone. But the keypad buzzes and sparks before he can finish. He jumps back as a voice starts talking from the speaker.

“Oh, this is really such a shame, isn’t it? For you, that is. I didn’t think there was anybody left here. Was just about to look somewhere else, actually. But here you are! And I’m so very hungry.”

Jon stares at the phone in surprise. “ _Helen_?”

There’s a pause, and then familiar laughter. Like a headache, a door twists into existence from nowhere and creaks open. Helen’s standing there. Or a painful, shifting form of spiraling colors that _looks_ like Helen Richardson.

“Archivist! Now, aren’t you a sight for sore Eyes.” She laughs to herself. “And you’re with your assistant. How sweet. I must say, I really didn’t expect you to still be with him, _Martin_.”

“I wouldn’t leave him,” Martin says.

“Oh, that’s _not_ what I said.”

There’s a long moment where Jon just looks at her before he speaks up, voice layered with power.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m just looking for something to… _eat_ , Archivist,” Helen responds smoothly. “Finding sources of fear to sustain us has gotten… difficult in this new world you’ve created.”

“Because you’re killing them all,” Martin snaps. Helen ignores him, turning towards Jon.

“I wonder how it tastes for you,” she muses. “Does our starvation feed you as much as the suffering we cause?”

Jon doesn’t answer, but his face is troubled. He struggles for a moment to find the words he wants. Clenches his fist tight around Martin’s hand.

“If you’re _suffering_ in this world, too, then… help us. I don’t know how to fix this, or if that’s even possible, but if there’s a way, we can find it. Just… help us get to the others. Please,” he says, finally. The compelling is gone from his voice and he sounds so, so tired.

“No,” Helen says.

“…No?”

“No,” she repeats.

“But… Helen, I thought we were—“

He is cut off before he can finish. “Oh, Helen might have helped you, once. She wasn’t so willing at the end, of course. Again and again, you turned her away; she needed you, and you lashed out at her. Even then, though, she considered you a friend. Perhaps she would have helped you now. But look at me, Archivist.”

The voice grows threatening, or maybe it already was.

“ _Do I look like Helen to you_?”

The laughter that fills the air doesn’t sound like Michael’s or like Helen’s. It doesn’t sound like _laughter_. Jon stumbles backwards, wincing in pain at the sight of the impossible shapes and colors that don’t look anything like Helen and never had.

“Goodbye, _Jon_ ,” the Distortion says, and Jon yanks Martin back and starts running, not looking back, as the fractal laughter cracks around them like a shattering mind. They run and run and Martin doesn’t stop until Jon does, eyes wide and staring and beginning to fade in among his flyaway strands of hair.

“Fuck,” Jon says, voice breaking. “I should have known— of course it’s not Helen anymore— I…”

“Shh,” Martin interrupts. He presses a kiss to Jon’s hand clasped in his. “Are we safe right now, Jon?”

The eyes half-there like a halo around Jon’s head flicker back and forth like they’re reading something, and Martin notices the hum of a tape recorder.

“Yes. I mean, no, of course not, but… yes. She— _it_ isn’t chasing us.”

“Right. So that probably wasn’t a great idea. But _not your fault_ , Jon,” Martin says. “There’s other things we can do. We can find our way back to London, right?”

Jon nods. Takes a few gulping breaths.

“We get in the car and drive. We’ll try to find people the old-fashioned way, okay? Basira, Da—Melanie, Georgie. And then even if there’s nothing we can do, we’ll, we’ll be together,” Martin says. Tries to project calmness and confidence, the way he always tries to do for Jon. Comfort, even if that’s not something they can trust anymore.

They go back to the safehouse, get in the car after Jon checks and double-checks to make sure the seats aren’t full of spiders or something, and they fill it with torches and what little food they still trust. And they drive, taking turns behind the wheel. When Martin’s driving, Jon tells him where to go, to get to London and to avoid the _things_ they pass on the way. When Jon drives, it’s silent, and Martin tries not to think too much at all.

The car’s clock is still on. If it’s actually working correctly, it’s been about five hours when the car stops. Martin’s jolted out of his haze and he glances in terror at Jon.

“Out of gas,” Jon says.

 _And miles to go before I sleep_.

There’s no way they can get anywhere. They’re in the middle of nowhere. But there’s nothing else they can do, so they get out of the car and just… start walking.

It’s getting dark, but not Dark. Just the gloomy chiaroscuro that makes your eyes see movement where there’s nothing in the corners of your peripheral vision. It’s also cold; the howling wind chills them, and Jon presses himself close to Martin for warmth and the small sense of security that physical contact brings. The only eyes visible around him are the two on his face.

They trudge through the trees like this, together, for what must have been hours if time still mattered. When Jon’s pace starts slowing, Martin wraps an arm around him, half-carries him along, and whispers poetry into his hair. Not anything good, just improvised lines, just something to ground them both.

And then there’s the distinctive _click_ of a tape recorder turning on.

Jon freezes, and then whips around, but it’s too late because there’s _something_ coming out of the shadows and everything is teeth or claws or knives or _sharp_ and the metallic tang of blood-scent fills the air and there’s a blur of rage and violence and slaughter or maybe hunt or is there even a difference and hundreds of blinding white eyes flash into existence around the Archivist and he _screams_ “stop” and whatever it is does stop.

He roars static and tears them apart before he can even see what or who it was and then falls to his knees because that’s where Martin is, lying on the ground, gasping for breath, _bleeding out_. The Archivist grabs him, holds him like his embrace will do anything.

“Stop,” he tells Martin, but there’s no power to it, only tears.

“Jon,” Martin chokes out, and it sounds like it hurts. The Archivist cannot do anything but watch. “Jon.”

“No. It’s not fair,” the Archivist sobs. “No. No, there’s no… it just _happened_. Martin, no, you can’t leave me. No. _Martin_.”

But Martin _can_ leave him, and he does. And the Archivist is left alone, shaking and weeping over an empty body in the middle of a forest over 200 km from London and anyone who could love or help him anymore.

So it goes like this.

They’re in the safehouse for a long time. It’s hard to keep track, nowadays, but it’s a long time before they feel safe enough to leave. Before Martin suggests trying to leave and _do_ something and Jon says “fine” with much less resistance than Martin had expected.

“We’ll find them when we get there,” Jon says, and they load up the car with torches and what little food they still trust and _more than enough_ full gas canisters and start driving. Martin drives, that is. Jon just Watches, the eyes floating around him blinking in and out of existence, looking almost like fireflies out of the corner of Martin’s own eyes.

He tells Martin where to go, how to get to London and how to avoid the things they pass with a tinge of static under his voice, and Martin finds himself following the directions before he even chooses to. Not that that’s necessary. He trusts Jon; Jon is the only one he _can_ trust anymore. It’s a little insulting at best – and worrying at worst – that Jon feels the need to compel him.

But they keep driving.

When they need to stop to refill the gas tank, Martin deals with the canisters while Jon stands guard, all his eyes – all the hundreds of them – flaring bright. It’s important that Martin is safe. It’s important that Jon keeps him safe.

“Are you okay?” Martin says suddenly. With all the focus he was using looking out for dangers, Jon hadn’t noticed him finishing up with the car and walking up to him. That isn’t good enough. If he missed _that_ , he could miss some horrible monster nightmare thing coming out of nowhere and—

“Let’s go,” Jon just says instead of answering, voice layered with static, and Martin complies immediately. He doesn’t look happy about it but if they’re moving, they’re safer. They need to keep moving.

It’s another hour or so on the road before Martin says anything. Jon knows that the careful calm in his voice is there for _his_ sake, but he also knows there’s a hunter only about a mile west of them and heading closer by the second, and a mass of corruption growing too close to the road for comfort just ahead of them. So he can’t focus on the tone of Martin’s voice. Keeping him safe is always, always more important.

“You know you don’t have to… to compel me like that. It feels… do you…” Martin pauses. Jon doesn’t interject. The hunter has stopped, he Sees, ran into a small group of human survivors. They’re torn apart in a flood of terror and Jon barely notices when Martin continues talking. “You _can_ stop, Jon, right? If something’s changed, you need to _tell_ m—”

“Martin, _turn_!” Jon yells, throwing his hand out towards the steering wheel. Martin swerves, narrowly avoiding the pitch black hole that he’s sure wasn’t in the road a second ago. His spine tingles unpleasantly and he struggles to catch his breath.

“Fuck, Jon,” he sighs.

Jon chooses his words carefully, now. Tries not to make it a question or command this time.

“What I _need_ is to, to watch out. This is what I _can do_. Let—I can protect us. Please.”

He doesn’t wait for Martin to respond. Closes his eyes, his own eyes, so he can See better. The halo of eyes grows sharper, brighter, casts his face into distorted shadow.

The rest of the drive goes by in silence again. Jon only breaks it to tell Martin where to turn, where to stop, where to avoid. And they get to London. They stop at the outskirts, near a building with some traces of Lonely fog swirling around the edges, not enough to pose a threat to them but maybe, maybe enough to shield them slightly from others’ eyes.

Find Basira first, they decide, but Jon can’t see her. Not with most of his focus looking in different directions, absorbing an impenetrable chaotic overload of information. So he turns more of his Eyes to Basira. _Nothing_.

“It’s okay,” Martin says, resting a hand on Jon’s back. “Maybe she’s…”

 _No_. He will not have lost her too. He looks harder. He knows she’s out there, he just… has to _see_ …

And then, with all his sight turned to her, the Archivist finds her. Of _course_ that’s where she is. And as he tries to tell Martin, the Archivist realizes he can no longer feel the hand on his back, and something is burning.

The something is _everything_. He can’t see Martin. No, he can’t _See_ Martin. The Archivist screams, wordless, coughs on acrid smoke. Nothing is there to respond. He pushes forward into the flames; they dance away from him like they refuse to give him the pleasure of burning.

“Martin,” he says and doesn’t even bother shouting it because he Knows every single person who is still alive in this hell of a world, and Martin isn’t _there_.

Unwillingly, the Archivist Knows that it was unthinkably painful.

He thought they were so close. He thought he was doing it right this time. He thought he could _save him_.

Even the Archivist cannot see what needs to be done sometimes.

So it goes like this.

The Archivist brings them to London. He finds Basira, right where she had to be, and Georgie and Melanie find their way to them as well. Jonah Magnus is dead, Basira says, and the institute is… well, not safe, but safer than anywhere else. The Archivist risks focusing his eyes away from _everything_ to make sure the eyes in her head are still her own. They are. It’s really Basira.

And there, with other people to finally share the burden, with Martin as safe as he could be in this never-ending nightmare, the Archivist realizes how tired he is. How _hungry_.

Nobody notices him leave. Basira is far too busy trying to figure out a way to undo the damage he has done with this ritual, and Georgie and Melanie are focused on helping people survive as they are. As soon as he can, Martin collapses into sleep in the room where once-upon-a-time he lived, murmuring to the Archivist to join him but unable to stay awake long enough to make sure it happens. After a moment of trepidation, the Archivist leaves him there.

He doesn’t realize what he’s looking for until, all at once, he does.

Somewhere on the streets, he finds a person, a middle-aged man cowering in the shadows, clutching a dead phone to his chest, too terrified to even call out for help. The Archivist doesn’t even need to _ask_ , just looks at him and he begins telling his story, the words spilling out in a frantic mess. When the recorder the Archivist hadn’t even noticed he’s holding clicks off, he leaves the man shaking and sobbing, the bugs he was just telling the Archivist about beginning to pour out of every orifice and crawling over him. His scream is muffled by their crawling, relentless swarms.

The Archivist walks away knowing that the man is dying.

But he feels _strong_.

That man is nobody. There are other people who are more important who need the Archivist to protect them. He needs this strength.

He returns to his institute and to Martin, and tells nobody what he has done.

They keep fighting and keep studying and keep surviving. The Archivist continues to grow stronger in secret, in the streets outside. It’s a necessary cost. He is able to protect them all; what are a few lost lives compared to that?

He chooses to stop feeling guilty.

But then someone comes to his doorstep, and he doesn’t think. It’s someone who has come to the institute before, a former student who hopes it’ll be safe, who’s asking for his help. But he feels so weak. And he Knows that they’ll be attacked soon, can sense the gathering of intent in the next few days, and the Eye’s protection of this place isn’t going to be enough. He needs to be stronger.

He doesn’t even listen to the statement as the re-lived darkness begins to eat at the young person from the inside out, just lets their terror wash over him and fill him.

“Jon?” someone says, jolting him into awareness, and it’s… it’s Martin, standing there. A crash of ceramics. He’s backing away, horrified, turning to leave, to _run_ —

The Archivist reaches out a hand.

“ _Stop_ ,” he says.

Martin does. Freezes. His eyes are full of panic and dread and no recognition. Whatever he sees, it is not the Jon he knows.

“Wait. No, Martin, I—I didn’t—“

Then something shifts and the Archivist can see Martin break free, but he doesn’t run away, back into the institute building. He steps forward, instead, out towards the Archivist, terror still painting his face but like he wants to say something.

It’s almost cartoonish, the way the vast empty space appears under him so suddenly. Martin hangs in the air for a split second that feels like an eternity, like some horrible Looney Tunes sight gag. And then he’s falling, and then he’s gone.

Only then does the Archivist scream.

“Not again,” he sobs. “It’s my fault, Martin, _Martin_. I’m sorry.”

But nobody is there to hear him, except for the tape recorder in his own hand.

He is starting to understand.

So it goes like this.

“I think I’m starting to get something,” Basira tells them and waves at the red-stringed corkboard behind her. “There’s this… _rift_ at Hill Top Road. A… space between realities, looks like. I found a statement about some _weird_ time stuff and—I think we can use it to reverse this. To… to go back home.”

Jon is exhausted. Starving. He refuses to let go of his humanity, but that means being strong enough to protect everyone is taking everything out of him. He won’t be able to continue much longer. But hopefully he won’t need to.

He wraps an arm around Martin and holds him tight.

Jon is exhausted, but they will make a plan. Together.

They head out for Hill Top Road a few days later. Jon and Martin and Basira, alone. Georgie and Melanie and the few remaining institute researchers and staff stay behind. Just in case.

Basira isn’t telling Jon exactly what the reversal ritual she’s researched entails, and he doesn’t Know. The Eye won’t let him. He catches her and Martin whispering, but they stop immediately when he notices. Something’s… wrong, though. He doesn’t need the Beholding to see that.

He expects having to fight off manifestations of every entity – and some monsters he cannot quite place – as they make their way to the basement of the one house that still stands at the end of the street.

He expects something like the preparation Basira directs them through, collecting symbols of the fears and arranging them in ways that _feel_ right, feel powerful and significant. Jon remembers a conversation he wasn’t present for: a strange old man waxing poetic about _music he can’t hear._

The Archivist does not, however, expect the quick glance and nod that passes between Martin and Basira. Does not expect the hand on his shoulder that at first he thinks is meant to comfort but quickly realizes is intended to hold him back. Couldn’t expect the quick blur of explanation and apology.

“Someone needs to stay behind,” Martin says.

“If something goes wrong and it doesn’t work, we need you _with us_ ,” Basira says.

“I need you to be okay,” Martin says.

The Archivist barely comprehends what they’re saying. None of it makes sense.

Martin hugs him close, presses a kiss to his lips, and then falls back into a crack in the basement floor, a crack that seems to stretch open wider to let him in.

The Archivist watches as Martin disappears, sacrificing himself for _him_. For the world, and for him.

He cannot move. He has to watch it happen again. And at this moment, he can do nothing.

So it goes like this, like this, like this.

Martin is crushed under the rubble of a collapsing building as they try to rescue someone caught in the wreckage. The Archivist survives, unscathed, somehow, despite holding Martin’s hand as everything fell apart around them. He still feels the warmth of his hand in his.

Something that looks like a person but isn’t reaches out to them. Martin reaches back before the Archivist can tell him to stop. His last words are “it’s okay, we’ve got you” before he’s ripped apart.

Martin chokes on water in the middle of the road, water that comes from nowhere and keeps coming and coming. The Archivist can only cry and watch as Martin drowns on nothing. He dies in the Archivist’s arms, Jon whispering “I love you” over and over again as he fades. It doesn’t help. That’s not what will help.

“We can’t leave,” Jon insists when Martin suggests leaving the safehouse, suggests trying to fight back, suggests finding the others and maybe even saving the world.

He can’t explain any more than that.

But Martin trusts him, so for now, they stay.

It’s not enough, of course. The Archivist may have escaped the End once before but his loved one cannot do the same, not forever. It is inevitable. It’ll be running out of food, eventually, if it’s not fire or choking or poison or sharp teeth and knives or lightning or worms or falling or being torn apart or, or, or.

The Archivist cannot hide away from death, no matter how hard he tries. It always comes. And the Archivist will have to watch.

So it goes like this.

Martin dies at Hill Top Road, yet again, this time a spider bite that blossoms dark and toxic beneath his skin. The Archivist collapses in mute, shaking horror, too late to even see the life drain out of him. The spider crawls up his arm and to his ear and he does not flinch. Good.

Maybe it whispers to him, that spider, or maybe he just knows what it wants him to know. Woven threads of a story that needs to unfold, what he has already realized needs to happen. He finally chooses to listen, right on time.

Jon opens his eyes – the two on his face. He is right where he was: in the safehouse, still. Martin’s safe, cooking something in the kitchen, just in the other room. The apocalypse is still raging outside, but they’re both alive right now.

There’s a spiderweb right in his line of sight, one that definitely hadn’t been there before. A spider sits in the middle, as smug as one of those things can look, and around it are letters woven into the web.

WHENEVER YOU’RE READY, it says.

And a little below and to the side, SOME PIG ;).

He should know better than to trust the Mother of Puppets, he thinks, but he’s _seen_ what happens. He’s seen hundreds of endings where he loses Martin, hundreds of futures where Martin _dies_ right in front of him or by his side or in his arms. And maybe it’s a lie, some kind of trick – it probably is – but for some reason, the Web wants him to believe that doing what it wants will change that.

He knows what will have to happen instead, but he doesn’t care. Whatever entity governs the narrative that his life seems to be fulfilling, it won’t let him and Martin stay happy together. And more than anything… he needs _Martin_ to be okay.


End file.
